White House: Closing Gitmo a 'Hasty Decision' - Updated

Updated: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was a “hasty decision,” in his daily press briefing with reporters. But he later backtracked in the briefing and clarified that he was referring to decisions made under George W. Bush.

The White house spokesman was asked whether it was a "mistake" to request the resources to close Guantanamo Bay without a plan.

"It was a mistake to set up something that became a rallying cry for enemies around the world and to hope for so long that we could simply continue to perpetuate the theory of keeping detainees there while the courts ruled otherwise," Gibbs responded.

"I don't doubt that the President--and I think he'll say this tomorrow--that we've made some hasty decisions that are now going to take some time to unwind. And closing Guantanamo Bay obviously is one of those decisions," he added.

But later in the briefing Gibbs was asked a follow up question on what looked like a startling admission. Gibbs said that he meant that the "hasty decisions" were made by the previous administration.

"And you said hasty," a reporter asked, “you talked about hasty decisions tomorrow, that it's going to take some time to unwind. Are you talking about the President's hasty decisions or the previous administration's hasty decision as it regards Guantanamo?”

"No, no, no, I'm sorry," Gibbs said. "My boss might want to know the answer to that. No, no, I'm discussing decisions that were made in the previous administration."

The reporter asked again, “You were not referring to the executive order?”

“No, no, no,” Gibbs said.

So either the White House spokesman misspoke or said too much. That’s for the public to decide. To some critics, Gibbs comment might evoke Michael Kinsley's famous political adage. Kinsley defined a gaffe in Washington as a moment when someone tells the truth. 

Guantanamo Bay has become a political minefield for the president. President Obama’s decision to close the controversial detention center in the early days of his presidency was met with adulation on the political left and earned headlines in newspapers across the world. It was seen as a clear break from Bush-era national security policy.

But recently Obama has broken with liberals over his decision to continue Bush-era military commissions to try Guantanamo Bay prisoners and his decision not to release photographs allegedly depicting U.S. soldiers abusing detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. To an extent, this split with the political left is indicative of the difference between campaigning and governing.

Gibbs’ gaffe Wednesday (Click here to see video) may have only further aggravated large portions of Obama's political base. Liberals rallied to Obama during the campaign in part because of his strong criticism of George W. Bush's "war on terror."

White House critics have long argued that closing Guantanamo Bay was one policy shift easier said than done.

Gibbs reversal, on what looked like a mega reversal, comes on the eve of a major national security speech by Obama. Obama is expected to address, in part, Senate Democrats' opposition to funding the closure of Gitmo. Democrats have withheld funding closure until the White House offers a clear plan on how the detention center will be shut down and importantly, where detainees will be sent.

The closure of Guantanamo Bay has quickly turned into a "not in my backyard" issue. No U.S. representative wants to explain why a Gitmo detainee was allowed to live in his or her district. In the same vein, Obama has found U.S. allies no more willing to accept detainees. France and Britain each accepted one former detainee. There are about 240 detainees at Guantánamo Bay and 30 are clear for release.

David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter

By: David Paul Kuhn

President Obama decided to wedge himself in before a planned speech by former Vice President Cheney on Guantanamo Bay, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, CIA Memos and American Safety.  Obama had not definitive plan, came across as narcissistic kid or like he was still campaigning and attacked the Bush-Cheney White House no less than 28-times.  This after he keeps saying that we (he) aren’t going to point fingers… HMMM… wonder when that is going to happen?  Obama’s Speech came across as a pre-emptive unprepared rebuttal to Vice President Cheney’s Speech.  He was talking from an 9/10 perspective… as if there were no danger.

Vice President Cheney, who would rather be fishing and hunting and has no political ambition or anything to gain from his president campaign, except to protect the American People came across as prepared and sincere.  His speech was very informative, reminding us of the stakes and threats that the Bush White House was operating under after 9/11.  He took responsibility, let us know that there were only 3-people water-boarded… one the engineer of 9/11, and reminded us that the results of the water-boarding saved us from an attack on Los Angeles.

After President Obama’s and Dick Cheney’s speeches today the work on Capital Hill continued unaffected.  There was no additional discussion of funds to close Guantanamo Bay~

• Comments have poured in from 9/11 families and survivors thanking Vice President Cheney.
• CNN, a liberal network, just did a poll showing that President Cheney’s approval rating has increased by 8% since he has been speaking out over the past month.
• Vice President Cheney is still asking to have CIA Memos declassified to support his position.  Obama refuses…  The memos that were released were redacted and left out the results of the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

Also released today… 

• 1 out of 7 released Guantanamo Bay releasees goes back to anti-American terrorist activities
• Under the Clinton Administration and others, torture was outsourced to Egypt and other countries… and it wasn’t water-boarding.

Related Resources:

• Obama vs Cheney...
• Click here to read the transcript of Dick Cheney's national security speech at the American Enterprise Institute.
• CIA denies Cheney request to declassify memos
• Cheney Says: Obama Endangers the Nation

Posted:  Daily Thought Pad

Obama vs Cheney...

Cheney on Obama: 'Recklessness Cloaked in Righteousness'

 Click here to read the transcript of Dick Cheney's national security speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

Today's speech... about Gitmo, squeezed in before Cheney's speech... planned for weeks came across as the Serious Adult (Cheney) verses the Narcissistic PC Man-Chiled (Obama) - Never a Fair Fight 

Obama and Crimes Against Humanity

by Ken Blackwell - Editor’s Note: Mr. Blackwell served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission from 1991 - 1993.

This is a tale of two worldviews. It begins not unlike the opening paragraph of Dickens’ immortal work, A Tale of Two Cities. Schoolchildren once memorized these famous opening lines, back when schoolchildren memorized anything.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

President Obama at his Hundred Day White House séance proclaimed waterboarding to be torture. His was a clear, unambiguous, declarative statement. In making that statement, he opened up former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney to criminal prosecutions, here and before an international criminal court. And not just these men, but possibly hundreds of others, including members of Congress from his own party.

Cliff May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, takes a different approach to the question of whether waterboarding is torture or not. May was badgered by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. May’s answer is not as yes/no, as on/off as President Obama’s. May said it depends. May’s answer was morenuanced. Liberals used to like nuance, but that was when John Kerry was nuancing. Here’s how it went:

Jon Stewart: But answer my question: Is waterboarding torture? Yes or no?
Cliff May: Defining torture is not easy. A simple legal definition is that it “shocks the conscience.” Cutting off Daniel Pearl’s head on videotape — that shocks my conscience. Sending a child out as a suicide bomber — that shocks my conscience. People jumping off the World Trade Towers because they’d rather die that way than by burning — that shocks my conscience. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities, gagging for a few minutes and, as a result, providing information that saves lives, then going back to his cell for dinner and a movie — no, my conscience is not shocked by that.

Are our consciences shocked by subjecting KSM to waterboarding? Apparently, this  enhanced interrogation technique didn’t shock the consciences of members of Congress who were briefed on its planned use. Some of us need to re-play those tapes of cell phone calls by people trapped in the World Trade Towers.

The question keeps coming back to whether we extend all the rights of American citizens to captured terrorists. And the question also comes back to whether the terrorists are to be accorded all the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Increasingly, our courts are saying terrorists are to be given constitutional protections, here, in Afghanistan, and at Gitmo. Geneva is another matter. This treaty binds nations to humane treatment of prisoners of war. In order to be counted as a prisoner of war, you must be in uniform (John McCain was, Nathan Hale was not), you must be subject to military discipline, and you must be taking part in a war conducted by competent authority.

The Geneva Convention also governs respect for medical treatment of prisoners and wounded soldiers. Take Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example. When one of their IEDs went off in 2003 near Baghdad and killed and wounded a number of American soldiers, a U.S. Army medical HUMVEE raced to the scene. Waiting for the medics to arrive, the terrorists set off a second IED. It had been planted there specifically to target the medical help. Inside the HUMVEE, an American female nurse was burned beyond recognition.

The purpose of the Geneva Convention was to give warring nations a strong, positive incentive to behave according to international norms and not to engage in conduct that “shocks the conscience.” When we give Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists prisoner of war status and Geneva Convention coverage—without demanding anything of them in return—we abandon one of the great achievements of the Geneva Convention.

Of course, some humans are not accorded human rights. Our courts have seen to that. President Obama named Justice Stephen Breyer as his ideal jurist. In 2000, Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion inCarhart v. Stenberg. That was the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional Nebraska’s law against partial-birth abortion. Justice Breyer’s opinion is worth quoting at length. He described various techniques of late-term abortion that do not shock his conscience. Nor do these techniques--unlike waterboarding, unlike slapping, unlike sleep deprivation--shock President Obama’s conscience, or the consciences of our liberal rulers.

During a pregnancy’s second trimester (12 to 24 weeks), the most common abortion procedure is “dilation and evacuation” (D&E), which involves dilation of the cervix, removal of at least some fetal tissue using nonvacuum surgical instruments, and (after the 15th week) the potential need for instrumental dismemberment of the fetus or the collapse of fetal parts to facilitate evacuation from the uterus. When such dismemberment is necessary, it typically occurs as the doctor pulls a portion of the fetus through the cervix into the birth canal. The risks of mortality and complication that accompany D&E are significantly lower than those accompanying induced labor procedures (the next safest mid-second-trimester procedures). A variation of D&E, known as “intact D&E,” is used after 16 weeks. It involves removing the fetus from the uterus through the cervix “intact,” i.e., in one pass rather than several passes. The intact D&E proceeds in one of two ways, depending on whether the fetus presents head first or feet first. The feet-first method is known as “dilation and extraction” (D&X). D&X is ordinarily associated with the term “partial birth abortion.”

A little translation may be required: “at least some fetal tissue” translates to the unborn child’s arm, a leg, or maybe her head. “Dismemberment of the fetus with nonvaccuum surgical instruments” means cutting off her arms or legs with razor-sharp implements while the child, still alive, is capable of feeling excruciating pain.

Rest assured, this is not torture. It doesn’t meet the legal definition of torture because under the rule of Roe v. Wade, the unborn child does not meet the legal definition of a person.

Terrorists were once defined—like pirates and slave traders—as hostis humani generis, enemies of all mankind. As such, they received no due process rights. They had no right to counsel. They received no protections under international agreements. When seized on the high seas by the Royal Navy, they could be promptly hanged upon determination that they were engaged in the proscribed activities.

It would have shocked the consciences of our ancestors, however, to dismember even such low characters as pirates, to cut off their arms and legs, and to let them bleed profusely to death. The most inhuman of humans in the nineteenth century could not have been treated as the least of humans are treated in our enlightened United States, by order of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Our new president abhors torture, unless it is the torture of the unborn. In that case, it is not torture at all, but simply inducing fetal demise. This great international uproar over what is and is not torture has been generated because of the treatment of three known mass murderers. The slaughter of innocents in their thousands elicits no international outrage. This is part of what Justice Breyer sees as evolving international standards of decency.

In my opinion, the Obama Administration’s abortion agenda is indeed a crime against humanity.

This weekend, President Obama will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Notre Dame. There, he will be honored, among other things, for his brave stand against torture. He has appointed Kathleen Sebelius to head our nation’s health system. She is a disciple of the most notorious late-term abortionist in the county, a dismemberer, by his own count, of 60,000 fetuses. The President and Secretary Sebelius want to force us all to pay for abortion-on-demand. They want to force doctors and nurses to take part in killing unborn children. They will doubtless tell us our consciences should not be shocked. They’re only inducing fetal demise. Heaven help us all. And Heaven help Notre Dame.

(In Sweden they now say it's okay to have an abortion if you don't get the gender baby you desire.  Does this scare you?  If it doesn’t it should!!)

Posted:  Marion’s Place

Related Resources:

• Obama, Notre Dame and Pro-Life
• Official Stop Obama at Notre Dame Site
• Keyes, priest arrested at Notre Dame protest
• Obama on Abortion and the Right to Life
• The Candidates
• The West Coast Plot: An "Inconvenient Truth"
• Cheney Says: Obama Endangers the Nation

The Torture Debate, Continued

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and other senior and expert members of Congress represented their colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable person verdict. What did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the existing circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Moreover, the circle of approval was wider than that. As Slate's Jacob Weisberg points out, those favoring harsh interrogation at the time included Alan Dershowitz, Mark Bowden and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. In November 2001, Alter suggested we consider "transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies" (i.e. those that torture). And, as Weisberg notes, these were just the liberals.

So what happened? The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions -- our blindness to al-Qaeda's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" -- and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

And they were right.

You can believe that Pelosi and the whole American public underwent a radical transformation from moral normality to complicity with war criminality back to normality. Or you can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

You don't need a psychiatrist to tell you which of these theories is utterly fantastical.

On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and other senior and expert members of Congress represented their colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable person verdict. What did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the existing circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.

Moreover, the circle of approval was wider than that. As Slate's Jacob Weisberg points out, those favoring harsh interrogation at the time included Alan Dershowitz, Mark Bowden and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. In November 2001, Alter suggested we consider "transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies" (i.e. those that torture). And, as Weisberg notes, these were just the liberals.

So what happened? The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions -- our blindness to al-Qaeda's plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama's own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed "high-value information" -- and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

And they were right.

You can believe that Pelosi and the whole American public underwent a radical transformation from moral normality to complicity with war criminality back to normality. Or you can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

You don't need a psychiatrist to tell you which of these theories is utterly fantastical.

by Charles Krauthammer - a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985, and contributor to Fox News.

 Posted: Daily Thought Pad

Oh my: Hoyer won’t back up Pelosi on claim that CIA lied

May 14, 2009 7:26 PM by Allahpundit

235 Comments » | 9 Trackbacks

Laugh... While You Can~

The CIA's Questioning Worked

In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists "did not make us safer." This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public -- in sections that have gone virtually unreported in the media.

• Slow Roll Time At Langley

• The CIA's Questioning Worked 

• Crimes That Deserve Punishment

Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005. It notes that "the CIA believes 'the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.' . . . In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques." The memo continues: "Before the CIA used enhanced techniques . . . KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, 'Soon you will find out.' " Once the techniques were applied, "interrogations have led to specific, actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates."

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

The memo notes that "[i]nterrogations of [Abu] Zubaydah -- again, once enhanced techniques were employed -- furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda's 'organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi' and identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks." This information helped the intelligence community plan the operation that captured KSM. It went on: "Zubaydah and KSM also supplied important information about al-Zarqawi and his network" in Iraq, which helped our operations against al-Qaeda in that country.

All this confirms information that I and others have described publicly. But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved.

Yet there is more information confirming the program's effectiveness. The Office of Legal Counsel memo states "we discuss only a small fraction of the important intelligence CIA interrogators have obtained from KSM" and notes that "intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of the [Counterterrorism Center's] reporting on al Qaeda." The memos refer to other classified documents -- including an "Effectiveness Memo" and an "IG Report," which explain how "the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others . . . has yielded critical information." Why didn't Obama officials release this information as well? Because they know that if the public could see the details of the techniques side by side with evidence that the program saved American lives, the vast majority would support continuing it.

Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.

This is the secret to the program's success. And the Obama administration's decision to share this secret with the terrorists threatens our national security. Al-Qaeda will use this information and other details in the memos to train its operatives to resist questioning and withhold information on planned attacks. CIA Director Leon Panetta said during his confirmation hearings that even the Obama administration might use some of the enhanced techniques in a "ticking time bomb" scenario. What will the administration do now that it has shared the limits of our interrogation techniques with the enemy? President Obama's decision to release these documents is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible acts ever by an American president during a time of war -- and Americans may die as a result.

By Marc A. Thiessen – Posted: Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The writer, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, served in senior positions in the Pentagon and the White House from 2001 to 2009, most recently as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Related Articles:

• Jack Bauer Is Officially Dead

• Hillary Clinton Blasts Cheney As Not ‘Reliable’

 Posted:  Daily Thought Pad